THE DEVIL I LOVE

Chapter Fifteen — What Ronan Knows

Damien read Aria's message three times.

He was in his home office when it came — a space that reflected the version of himself he had built deliberately, all clean lines and controlled order, nothing left to chance. He sat back in his chair and looked at the message and felt the shift that had been coming settle fully into place.

Richard Sinclair knew.

He had known this was inevitable. Everything between him and Aria had pointed toward this moment with the quiet inevitability of a tide coming in, and he had chosen to keep walking toward the water anyway. He did not regret that choice. He was, however, under no illusions about what it would cost.

He called Ronan.

"Sinclair knows," he said, when Ronan picked up.

A pause. "About Meridian?"

"About Aria."

Silence. Then: "Damien."

"Don't."

"I haven't said anything."

"You're about to say several things. I'd rather you didn't."

Ronan was quiet for a moment that communicated significant restraint. "How long?"

"Six weeks."

"Six—" Ronan stopped himself. Damien could hear him recalibrating. "Does she know about the full scope of the Meridian plan? The Q1 positioning?"

"She knows it moves against her father's holdings. Not the specifics."

"And when she finds out the specifics?"

"I'll tell her before she finds out from anyone else."

Another pause. "Damien, you understand what you're doing."

"I understand precisely what I'm doing."

"The board will see it as a liability. If Sinclair goes public with the connection between you and his daughter, it becomes a narrative — that you're compromised, that this is personal. It undermines everything we've—"

"I know, Ronan."

"Then explain to me how you're holding both things."

Damien stood and moved to the window. The city at night spread out below him — ordered and lit, every light representing a decision someone had made, a direction chosen. He had spent years looking at this view and seeing only forward. Only the next position, the next move.

"She's not a liability," he said quietly. "She is the one honest thing in the middle of everything calculated."

Ronan was silent for a long time.

"Then you need to be very careful," he said finally, "that the calculated things don't destroy the honest one."

Damien said nothing. He knew Ronan was right. He also knew, with the unnerving certainty of someone encountering something genuinely new, that the careful architecture of his plan had developed a flaw — not because Aria had created one, but because being near her had reminded him what it felt like to want something that wasn't on any strategy document.

He picked up his phone after he ended the call.

I want to see you, he typed to Aria. Tomorrow. Tell me where and I'll be there.

Her reply came after a few minutes.

There's a small café on Wren Street. Nine a.m. I need coffee and I need to see your face.

Something unclenched in his chest.

I'll be there, he wrote.

He set the phone down and stood at the window a while longer, looking at the city he had spent years learning to navigate, understanding that the most important moves he would make in the coming weeks had nothing to do with Meridian Holdings and everything to do with a woman in a navy dress who had walked into a restaurant on a quiet street and made him feel like a person rather than a position.

He was not going to lose that.

Whatever the cost, he was not going to lose that.